2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV)

Happy New Year!

The new is here!

Tradition is to make a New Year’s Resolution and to keep it! On January 1, 2008, I made a New Year's resolution to never consume alcohol again. And today, I am celebrating 18 years of keeping that resolution! I think God is celebrating with me today!

God loves to celebrate our growth and achievements with us. We are important to Him. He loves us very, very much! We who confess Christ as our Savior and Lord are to emulate Him, to live as he lived, loving ALL our earthly neighbors as we love ourselves. But how can we love ourselves when we feel so inadequate, so unworthy? How can we love ourselves when we don’t even like ourselves sometimes?

The first step in loving ourselves is to see ourselves as God sees us, as human beings created in the image of God; the image of LOVE! We are a new creation in Christ. If we aren’t living in LOVE, if we don’t think we deserve love, we need to sit down and talk to God about that. God loves us! We need to learn to LOVE ourselves. He made us in his image.

If earthly hurts, habits, and hangups make us feel unlovable, then we have to make the necessary changes to grow in the likeness of Jesus. The eight recovery principles from Celebrate Recovery offer a tool to help us make the changes we need. These principles help us to overcome old Hurts, to break bad Habits, and to let go of our old Hangups. If you need some help with this work, visit a Celebrate Recovery meeting sometime, and you will find many people just like you, who are working daily on old hurts, bad habits, and hangups. The ones they need to let go.

Daily prayer, Bible reading, and quiet time with God are required to overcome those hurts, habits, and hangups. Make a New Year’s Resolution to begin a God Diet!

And here is a good schedule to use for your new 2026 God Diet…

1. Start your day with this podcast and read the Bible.

2. Spend some time in prayer before you jump on social media or go to school or work.

3. Pray and center yourself in God, asking for his help as you go through your day.

I can vouch for this schedule, because I’ve been using it for the last 18 years. Well, except for the podcast, which is only two years old and was added then. If we spend time with God each morning, before the world leads us into the fray, we will find it easier to turn to him as trouble, worries, or bad news find us. If we truly embrace Jesus Christ each morning, we will be amazed at how much the old habits, hurts, and hangups will fade away, and we move closer to God’s goodness.

As our verse for today says, “The old has gone,” and the new life centered in Christ is here!

I believe in you, and I need your help to keep my LOVE for God and my neighbors as the center of my life! Help me to share my life with You, by centering myself in Your LOVE each day. And help me to share that LOVE with my neighbors (all of them) every day! Thank you, Lord, AMEN.

This devotional was written and read by Bernice Howard.

Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.

If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: podcasts@1stchurch.org.

First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to...

As the Christmas season neared, the gift shop in the hospital where I worked at the time displayed three lovely little porcelain angels. These were unlike most Christmas angels. Each, about 6 inches high were dressed in a bulky coat and cap. One held a loaf of bread, one a Christmas tree, and the third held a lighted candle. They captured my heart, but were considerably outside my pocket book. Each day I would go by the gift shop and look in at these angels always fearful that someone would have purchased them. Then about a week before Christmas, the gift shop had a 50% off sale on all Christmas items. I hurried into the shop and to my joy what I had become to think of as my angels were still there and I bought them. I knew exactly where I would display them.

That evening when I got home I had several things to carry in – including my precious angels. As I placed the items on my kitchen counter, the package holding the angels slipped from my hand and hit our tile floor with a shattering sound. All were broken. I felt heartbroken as well. I gathered all the pieces, sorted them and over the next few days did my best to glue them together. When I was done I looked at these poor broken angels and loved them even more.

Since that incident over thirty plus years ago, I have left my three broken Christmas angels on display year round as a reminder that it is through our broken places that the love of Christ can most easily shine in. Over time I have also discovered that it is through our broken places – those places that Christ has lovingly mended – that we can most often become angels for others who are broken.

This was reinforced most recently when I saw a verse written by Leonard Cohen, a Canadian song writer, singer, and poet. He said, “There is a crack in everything, and that is where the light comes in.”

Where we are cracked, the light of Christ shines in. And where we are cracked the light and the love of Christ can shine back out to all we meet.

Dear God, help me to always be grateful for the cracks that have occurred in my life. Help me to accept your loving hand in mending me, and help me have the courage to shine your light back out through my cracks to others. In the loving name of Jesus the Christ, Amen.

This devotional was written and read by Barbara Sadler.

Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.

If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: podcasts@1stchurch.org.

First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

At the beginning of this year, my star word was Apply. I’ll be honest—it didn’t feel inspiring at first. It sounded plain, almost unfinished. Others drew words like Joy, Peace, or Abide—gentle, lyrical words that seemed to sparkle with promise. Mine felt like a to-do list.

But over time, I began to understand: God wasn’t asking me to find something new. He was asking me to live what I already knew. He was inviting me to practice what I’d spent years studying—to take His Word from the pages of my Bible and let it shape the rhythm of my life.

When Paul wrote to the Ephesians, he described what a Spirit-filled life looks like. It isn’t about lofty theology; it’s about a faith that moves. Each phrase is practical. It’s about how we treat people, how we worship, and how we choose gratitude. It’s the art of applying what we believe.

I began to notice that when I sent a note of encouragement or prayed for someone in my Bible study group, I wasn’t just offering kindness—I was applying Scripture through my words. When I found myself humming a hymn while folding laundry, I was applying worship to ordinary moments. And when life felt heavy, but I chose to whisper, ‘Thank You, Lord,’ I was applying gratitude, transforming weariness into worship.

Paul closes this short passage by reminding us to do all things “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” That phrase carries weight—it means that everything I say or do bears His signature.

To apply something “in His name” is to ask: Would this reflect the heart of Jesus? It’s a question that transforms our choices, tones, and attitudes. It takes the Gospel out of the sanctuary and plants it right in the kitchen, the carpool, the grocery line, the inbox.

Now, in these final weeks of the year, I can see what God was teaching me through that one small word. Apply isn’t flashy—it’s faithful. It’s about taking what’s true and making it visible.

It’s about translating faith into daily motion—through our words, our worship, and our gratitude. Application is where transformation takes root. It’s the quiet work of obedience that turns belief into a lifestyle of praise.

Lord, thank You for reminding me that Your Word is meant to be lived, not just learned. Teach me to speak encouragement, to carry a song in my heart, and to give thanks in all things. Let my life be evidence of what I’ve applied—a melody of gratitude played in Your name. Amen.

This devotion was written by Marcia Prill and read by Judy Wilson.

Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.

If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: podcasts@1stchurch.org.

First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.